Il Perdigiorno. Opera in due tempi

Intervention curated by Claire Tancons, Elisa Fantin, Cake Away, realized from May to June 2013 in Venice.

With: Tommaso Bisogno, Laura Bruni, Francesca Cagnin, Elisabetta Di Maggio, Matilde Di Pietropaolo, Giulio Ernesti, Bruna Esposito, Elisa Fantin, Andrea Giacometti, Gabriella Giuriato, Rodica Istrati, Mariagiulia Leuzzi, Antonella Mazza, Rita Merritt, Cristina Mordiglia, Federica Pellati, Luca Pes, Piero Pes, Roberta Rizzi, Hella Thalmann, Maria Grazia Vetrone, and Andrea Zanzotto.

THE WANDERER
Dedicated to all those who carry out their daily ritual; to the “obsessives” and to those who take seriousness lightly; to repetition, to dedication, to continuity.
To all those who create their world day after day in a repetitiveness that appears to be the same and an end unto itself, but which actually produces insistence and transformation.
The wanderer, the traveller who takes herself out, who walks light-heartedly. 
The emblem of the individual, the artist, but also the tourist and the citizen...
The wanderer is the person who goes around the world and has their "Bildung", their experience of life. Do they take lightly something that represents the very essence of life? Of art? Of poetry?

From Piero Morganti’s Diary 
9 February 1995, Thursday
When I think of Maria, I recall Eichendorff’s lines:
Denn will er seine Wunder weisen
In Berg und Wold un Storm und Feld...
And points out his miracles 
In mountain and wood and river and field...

From "The Happy Wanderer"
by Jospeh Freiherr von Eichendorff
When God wishes to show true favour to someone,
he sends him out into the wide world
and points out his miracles
in mountain and wood and river and field.

The indolent ones who laze at home
are not refreshed by the dawn;
they only know about rearing children,
about cares, burdens and miseries - and all for bread.
The brook springs out of the mountains,
the larks zip high with pleasure;
is there anything I should not sing with them
with full throat and fresh spirit?
Let dear God alone prevail;
He sustains the brook, the larks, the wind and field,
and the earth and sky;
and he has also ordered my life for the best.

STRUCTURE OF THE WORK
1- WORKSHOP
    Everyone finds their own colour.
CREATING THE COLOUR
A few people at a time (though the total is forty) construct their own colour alongside Maria.
Each has their own bowl, brush and lots of colours.
I include other people in my creative process, passing on to others what I know.
I allow my intimate side to show itself to others. It is as though I were making them enter inside me and allowing them to take a little part of me.
I communicate my artistic practice to others to help them have an experience. What I do every day is copied by each person in their own way. This downplays and eradicates the emphasis of my simple and repetitive gesture and shortens the distance between myself and others.
The colour is an emblem of subjectivity. Each has their own colour, each chooses their own colour, and each is their own colour. Behind every colour is a person.
You construct your own colour starting with the artistic practice; you discover it whilst working in contact with the substance itself. 
ABSORBING THE COLOUR
You absorb the colour you have found through a sea sponge.
The sponge is a symbolic element that absorbs the experience.
The sponge is a small element that is kept in the palm of your hand.
The sponge is an element that allows you to carry your colour around.
ARCHIVING AND ACCUMULATING
Everything that was needed to reach the construction of the colour, and everything that constituted the experience in order to finally define a colour, is put to one side and archived in small containers, to be mixed with everyone else’s colours at the end.
I mix the remains: everything that is left over is poured into a single container.
CONSTRUCTING THE OBJECT:
The wanderer’s object is constructed using a branch or a cane, a nylon thread and a coloured sponge.
A transparent thread holding the coloured sponge is hung on a slender branch about one-metre long.
It is an object that leans on the shoulder, like a bundle.

2- PROCESSION 
    A shared condition
A group of around thirty people goes for a walk together.
Walking in companionship and carrying around what they made.
Walking together whilst taking out their own individuality.
Everyone carries their “bundle” on their shoulder, a coloured sponge hanging to a branch via a thread. At the end of the route the sponges are placed in a single container.
The sponges have been soaked in the colour that each person produced in the workshop.
It is the colour that each person found through their own experience and their own sensitivity.
There are lots of little lumps full of colour. Each colour is the essence of an individual.
They are lots of coloured points that move through the city space.

MY GESTURE TO OTHERS
Sediment. Accumulate. Leave traces. Take out. From the individual action to the group action.
I imagine that the things produced in my studio start to come alive and move around.
The pleasure of having one’s concentration or solipsistic discourse interrupted: opening to the outside.
Maintaining your gesture and taking it outside.
Can my daily process be put in relation to other people? How can we open up our intimate gesture to the outside world?
From inside to out: from the solitary action to the group action.
Carrying around what is inside.
Symbolically taking ourselves out for a walk in the world.
Lending others what I have found: a process, a method.
Keeping others very close to me.
Sharing what is inside me with others.
Making my intimate relationship with myself, with my substance, with my existence steal away and be with other people.
Activating a shared place.
Creating a place where people can express themselves.
Creating the conditions where things can happen.
Helping people show their own colour.
From a little to a lot.
A people-oriented substance.
The substance produced by a single person seems small on its own, but becomes a lot when placed next to the others.
From one to many.
Cohesion brings strength.
Adding. Accumulating. Getting close. Adding together. Interweaving. Mixing.
1+1=2; 2+1=3; 3+1=4 etc.
One day after another, one colour after another, one person after another...
Broadening the gesture in space.
Opening, doing, extending, stripping.
Spreading out and moving in space.
The skein of the substance envelops itself. How to open it and spread it outside?
Occupying the space, moving it from one point to another.
Walking together.
Walking together and moving along, leaving traces of our walk.
Performing a ritual with other people. Being together. Sharing a space. Walking with others.
How to give dignity to many solitary acts? How to put subjectivities and individualities in relation to each other? How to share a space together?
From many to one.
If that which we produce in solitude is then allowed to commune with the outside, what does it then bring back to the individual discourse?